Dear Life

Stories

With her peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but spacious and timeless stories, Alice Munro illumines the moment a life is shaped -- the moment a dream, or sex, or perhaps a simple twist of fate turns a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these stories (set in the world Munro has made her own: the countryside and towns around Lake Huron) about departures and beginnings, accidents, dangers, and homecomings both virtual and real, paint a vivid and lasting portrait of how strange, dangerous, and extraordinary the ordinary life can be.

From the critics

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"Dear Life" by Alice Munro is a wonderful collection of short stories. While my favourite is 'Corrie', there wasn't a single story that I disliked. I found myself only able to read one story a day because I wanted a bit of time to think about the story I just finished. Just great.

I read all the short stories in this book but it was not my favourite collection of Alice Munro's work. It didn't hold my interest as much as some of her previous collections.
It also needed better editing!

If you like reading short stories on life with depth, it is a great choice. This book was written by a Nobel Laureate in Literature on short stories. Having said that if you are looking for movie-like entertaining short stories, this book is not. This is a book of short stories on human written by a Nobel Laureate.

I am not a fan of short stories at the best of times and this book is a quintessential example of why I don't like this genre. Snippets of sad lives, neglect, misunderstanding and few redeeming events to pull the characters or the situations into balance. How hard can life be in Saskatchewan?

mxt144
Feb 05, 2014

I couldn't finish the book. I just couldn't connect with any of the characters, and the themes were too repetitive.

Quotes

“The thing is to be happy,' he said. 'No matter what. Just try that. You can. It gets to be easier and easier. It's nothing to do with circumstances. You wouldn't believe how good it is. Accept everything and then tragedy disappears. Or tragedy lightens, anyway, you're just there, going along easy in the world.”
― Alice Munro, Dear Life: Stories